We Want Media

Well, it’s spring break at NYU and I am down in sunny Tampa, Fla., with my family. While here, I took the time to talk with Andy Staples of the Tampa Tribune. Staples is a sportswriter for the paper, and is also runs a blog on the Tribune’s website that focuses on University of Florida athletics (For those of you who may be unaware, the Gators are in top form right now -- their football team crushed storied Ohio State 41-14 to win the BCS Championship in January and their basketball team opens tonight as the number one overall seed in the NCAA tournament).

Staples says that it’s important to have fun while writing a blog, and he revels in the freedom blogging affords him. While he must write his paper columns for a broad audience and thus in a more restrained tone, he can drop these pretensions for the narrower audience of his blog: Gator fans in their 20s. Andy points to an “investigative report” he did for his blog: Gators and Jean Shorts. Staples says that such a piece never could have appeared in print. “Hardly anyone over thirty would get the reference,” he explains. “They’d probably ask, ‘What's so bad about jean shorts?’”

Staples also hopes the personal style he can bring to his blog will help him connect with his readers, and pull them into reading the Tribune’s print edition, or watching their network affiliate, WFLA, NBC-TV. “Hopefully, that connection will make my readers more loyal to me, and, by extension, more loyal to the Trib,” he explains.